AND LOWER EGYPT. 227 



tivated the rice-plant; and, as is the case in almost 

 all inquiries of a similar nature, the mind is still 

 left in a state of uncertainty. According to Messrs. 

 Shaw* and Goguet-j~, the people of Egypt, in an- 

 cient times, lived on rice. But M. Pauvv asserts, 

 that this plant was a greater stranger to those 

 very Egyptians, than the cassavi of Brasil is, 

 at this day, to the inhabitants of Germany. He 

 adds, that it was not till the time of the caliphs that 

 the first grain of rice was imported from India 

 into Lower Egypt, where the cultivation of it first 

 began in the environs of Damietta, and he quotes 

 Frederic Hasselquitz as his authority^. In truth, 

 the Swedish traveller has affirmed that, conform- 

 ably to appearances, the Egyptians learned the 

 method of cultivating rice, under the domina- 

 tion of the caliphs : for, says he, it was during 

 their reign, that a great many useful plants were 

 imported thither, by the way of the Red Sea §. 

 We have then nothing for it but a conjecture of 

 Hasselquitz, supponed by no authority whatever. 



On the other hand, the opposite sentiment, that 

 which reckons the cultivation of rice among the 



* Shaw's Travels, p. 391. 



-j- Orgin of Laws, vol. ii. p. 344. 



X Philosophical Researches respecting the Egyptians and 

 Chinese, vol. i. p. 138. 



§ Voyage to the Levant, by Fred. Hasselquitz, translated 

 from the German, part i. p. 163. 



a 2 other 



